The bowhead whale is the only baleen whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. In the 16th and 17th centuries, whalers nearly exterminated the Svalbard bowhead population; which is now the most endangered of the species. Today, the surviving population prefers to live away from land, under what remains of sea ice far north in the highest latitudes of the Arctic ocean. As the Earth warms, this habitat is melting and changing in ways that hinder the recovery of this vulnerable population.